The Internet, Web Browsers and HTML/DHTML are not oriented towards the display of large amounts of information. Specifically, existing web browsers (e.g., Internet Explorer™, Netscape™ Navigator™, etc.) exhibit severe performance degradation when web pages contain any sizable number of formatting elements. The formatting elements (also known as markup tags) may be used, for example, to define the page layout, fonts and graphic elements, as well as the hypertext links to other documents on the Internet.
Because of the browser performance problem, some additional mechanisms are used when a user's request generates a large amount of information for display. For example, the information may be converted into a commonly-known file format (e.g., “PDF”, Word, Excel, etc.), downloaded to the user's machine, and displayed using a “plug-in” application or an application already installed on the user's machine. Another common mechanism for handling a large display of data divides the display into page-sized or screen-sized portions, displays one portion, and then provides navigation links to the remaining portions.
The above techniques require the user to spend additional time and effort for accessing data to be browsed. Thus, it would be advantageous to provide an efficient and convenient mechanism for displaying large amounts of information directly to the user in a browser window.